connected in too important a manner with the story we have undertaken to
relate to allow us to pass it over in silence.

The political plans of the cardinal when he undertook this siege were
extensive. Let us unfold them first, and then pass on to the private
plans which perhaps had not less influence upon his Eminence than the
others.

Of the important cities given up by Henry IV to the Huguenots as
places of safety, there only remained La Rochelle. It became necessary,
therefore, to destroy this last bulwark of Calvinism--a dangerous leaven
with which the ferments of civil revolt and foreign war were constantly
mingling.

Spaniards, Englishmen, and Italian malcontents, adventurers of all
nations, and soldiers of fortune of every sect, flocked at the first
summons under the standard of the Protestants, and organized themselves
like a vast association, whose branches diverged freely over all parts
of Europe.

La Rochelle, which had derived a new importance from the ruin of
the other Calvinist cities, was, then, the focus of dissensions and
ambition. Moreover, its port was the last in the kingdom of France open
to the English, and by closing it against England, our eternal enemy,
the cardinal completed the work of Joan of Arc and the Duc de Guise.

Thus Bassompierre, who was at once Protestant and Catholic--Protestant
by conviction and Catholic as commander of the order of the Holy Ghost;
Bassompierre, who was a German by birth and a Frenchman at heart--in
short, Bassompierre, who had a distinguished command at the siege of
La Rochelle, said, in charging at the head of several other Protestant
nobles like himself, "You will see, gentlemen, that we shall be fools
enough to take La Rochelle."

And Bassompierre was right. The cannonade of the Isle of Re presaged to
him the dragonnades of the Cevennes; the taking of La Rochelle was the
preface to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

We have hinted that by the side of these views of the leveling and
simplifying minister, which belong to history, the chronicler is forced
to recognize the lesser motives of the amorous man and jealous rival.

Richelieu, as everyone knows, had loved the queen. Was this love a
simple political affair, or was it naturally one of those profound
passions which Anne of Austria inspired in those who approached her?
That we are not able to say; but at all events, we have seen, by the
anterior developments of this story, that Buckingham had